I put in a snipe a couple days in advance for a listing on ebay. My bid was $22.99, someone else won the item for $22.50, and when I checked the bid history, my bid never even showed up!
What gives?
This was an important one and I lost it!
Troy

I think you explained that very well, the3coopers! The bottom line is that the higher bid always wins, not the last bid. I was reminded of that just the other day when an earlier proxy bid beat my snipe by only 5 cents! See eBay auction 260147063341 to see my frustration..._________________John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra

Well sorry to burst your bubble but with 5 seconds to go the bid stood at 17.02, so any bid above 17.52 would have been accepted by eBay, the only time bid increment comes into it is when the current bid price is within 1 increment of your bid/snipe.

So unfortunately if you had left it as it was you would still have won at 20.60, your last minute actions just cost you 5c... but I'm sure you can afford it... if your bid had been 20.16 you would have won at that price too.

Had there been another snipe at say $20 then you would be more correct with your scenario... I guess there was a fair chance of that so the extra 5c that it cost you was probably worth it._________________Mark

Note: A bidder may be outbid by less than a full increment. This would happen if the winning bidder's maximum bid beats the second highest maximum by an amount less than the full increment.

If you were bidding against another bidder's maximum bid, your bid had to meet the other bidder's maximum bid plus one cent to become the current high bidder on the item.

(eBay bid increment help)

I find it amusing how easy it is to out-think myself with the bidding amount. E.g. I'll consider $26.10 instead of $25, then realise that people know about that trick so consider $26.90, then realise $26.90 will fail against a nice round number like $27, so up the bid to $29, then realise that will fail against the normal amount of $30... etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum.

1: What do I believe its worth?
2: What is the maximum amount I am prepared to pay.
3: Convert that maximum to the currency of the auction.
4: Reduce it by the amount that I will be charged in postage/shipping.

... and that is my snipe amount, if its beaten I consider others value the item higher than I do at present, it may in time change my view on the value of such items, but for this auction I made the correct decision and there are no regrets._________________Mark

The thing to remember is that you're not /really/ being outbid by only a few cents, most of the time -- it just looks that way because you don't see what the actual bid was.

(This is the situation, I think, that really bugs non-snipers. Obviously, they think, they would have been willing to pay more than the winning price of 15.42; they have no way of knowing the auction was actually sniped with a bid of 52.00.)

I've heard it recommended to people that don't like snipers (or that find it hard to come up with a maximum bid) to imagine the auction in your head as a traditional auction. Once you imagine the bidding going too high for you, you've found your maximum.